Home Depot Co-Founder: Obamacare Is 'A Bad Deal' for Americans

(CNSNews.com) - Bernie Marcus, co-founder and former CEO of The Home Depot, declared in an interview with FOX News' Neil Cavuto that President Obama's signature healthcare legislation "is a bad deal for America"

"This is going to have a very dramatic effect on the way we live our lives," Marcus noted, adding that for average Americans, "It's going to hurt every one of them."

"This is a bad deal for America. It's a bad deal for business, it's a bad deal for job creation in America and I don't know what's going to happen," Marcus told Cavuto a day after the law's employer mandate was put on hold for one year. "I can't believe the American people don't understand that their costs are going to go up, that the kind of medical attention in the future is nothing like what they had in the past," he said.

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"It just doesn't make any sense to me, Neil and I can't believe that people are voting for this when, in fact, it's going to hurt every one of them. Older people, the people who (can) least afford it, the poor people and the single people who voted overwhelmingly for him (Obama), are gonna have to come up and involve themselves in the mandate or they're gonna pay a fine."

The mandate, which will require employers to provide health insurance to employees who work more than 30 hours a week, was originally slated for implementation in 2014, the same year as mid-term elections in the House and Senate.

Asked whether the delay was a political decision on the part of the Obama administration, Marcus replied, "This is all a political maneuver and it's bad for America. Why aren't we thinking about what's good for the American people? This is very destructive for jobs, it's very destructive for anybody out there."

"It's only what's good for the politicians and we know there's an election coming up in 2014 and we know that if this thing had gone into effect in 2014, there would have been hell to pay."

Small business owners are "in a quandary that you cannot believe," Marcus said he learned from talking to more than two dozen current or former small business owners who are fellow members of the Job Creators Alliance.

"The Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer with more than 2,200 retail stores in the United States (including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the territory of Guam), Canada, and Mexico," according to the company's website. The company employs approximately 340,000 people, according to its page on Google Finance.

Marcus, who co-founded the company with Arthur Blank in 1978 and opened the first store in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1979, retired from The Home Depot in 2002.